In the course “Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communications": we will:
1) Build skills in the analysis of the intercultural communication process using Russian-Western communication as an example.
2) Apply the knowledge of interrelations between different contexts of communication (cultural, institutional, professional, social, interpersonal, etc.) to the cultural history and national psychology of Russians.
The purpose of the course is to provide the students with a broad overview of the basic principles governing the past, the present and the future interactions between Russia and the West, with a focus on the culture and national psychology of Russians and Western Europeans.
For example, we will look at the cases when basic cultural values of Russians show up through the linguistic choices shaping language production which is consequently misattributed by Western partners. No matter what the language of intercultural communication is – Russian, or English – the meaning of many linguistic expressions may be reconstructed wrongly by the representatives of another culture.
Some of the basic questions we will tackle are:
• What are the concepts of culture that have the strongest influence on communication?
• What are Russian basic cultural values and how they shape modern Russian consciousness?
• What are the specific communication patterns of modern Russians, including those of public and electronic discourse?
• What is important to know about communication with Russians in organizational contexts?
Importantly, this course is NOT just a list of practical instructions of dos and don’ts of dealing with Russians. The course contains a substantial academic component introducing the key notions and concepts of the Theory of Communication, which will be extensively introduced throughout the first few modules of the course. These theoretical grounds will be further on used as a tool for analyzing the intercultural communications with Russians.
Do you have technical problems? Write to us: coursera@hse.ru

Reviews

TJ

An excellent course! Subject matter was interesting and well-presented!

LR

Jul 06, 2017

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

An important subject presented in a sincere and engaging manner.

From the lesson

Culture in Intercultural Communication

This lecture will focus around Culture per se and the language we need to be able to discuss it. The more complex and less formalized is the subject of the discussion, the more crucial are its instruments. We will introduce various dimensions that are applicable to different cultures and will also start to discuss the Russian culture in these terms. Starting this week we will also present short interviews of Prof. Bergelson's with people (non-Russians culturally) who have lived and worked in Russia, and who will serve as experts on various issues and contexts of communication with Russians. As stereotypes are one of the central concepts in the cross-cultural discourse, this week we will see interviews centered on this topic. The experts you will meet -- and not only this week -- are Anna Skaya (CEO VisualDNA Russia), Michael Johnston, (Private Equity Sector Lead Director of Strategy at Deloitte), and Ilya Gnoensky who specializes in crisis management.

Taught By

Mira Bergelson

Transcript

Hi there. I'm happy that had again a chance to join us in this course and share his professional experience about living and working in Russia and doing business with Russians. So now we'll ask him some more focused questions, and lets see what he will tell us. So, yeah, thanks for coming again. >> Thank you. >> Good to see you again. You said that you will share your professional experience with a more corsera audience. So please, go ahead. You said that your second profession that you got in the United States that allowed you to work here in Russia. So what's your experience. >> Sure, one can talk for a long time about cultural differences that can be seen and applied in business but I like to focus on couple of specific points to make the conversation more specific. My field is Crisis Management and turn around and restructuring, and so in this field, I have opportunity to see businesses when they're in trouble. So, when a business runs out of money, when business is on the edge, when business owners have to make difficult decisions, when they struggle, a lot of times businesses are their babies. They're living organisms that they've built with their own hands. And so it's very interesting for me to see how business owners overall react to this type of situation versus business owners in Russia. So, there's some similarities and there's some differences. So let's talk about a couple of similarities and then we'll go through some differences. So what are similarities? Obviously, these are the most difficult times in the lives of these business owners. So they panic. They don't exactly know what to do. They have to make a very difficult decisions. They have to lay off a lot of people. They have to close facilities. They have to close factories. And these decisions are difficult for anybody. It doesn't matter if you are a Russian, American, European, if you're Australian, or Chinese it doesn't matter. But there are certain differences in how these important decisions can be handled. Russians, although they have made enormous progress in the way they do business in the last 20, 30 years, in my view, we're still a little bit behind when it comes to assigning full responsibility for certain events, for certain tasks to individual employees. >> Mm-hm, mm-hm. >> So a lot of times, business owner in Russia will not exactly know what to do and so the business owner will just say look this needs to be done and the person will tell this to numerous employees. And so now everybody's running around under the impression that they have to do this and they are responsible, but when you really talk to everybody. You realize that nobody, there is not a one person, who can step out of the group and say yes, I am responsible for this. This is something that I think has been in practice in the United States and in some other western cultures for a long time where the concept of personal responsibility for a specific event, for a specific tasks, for a specific chunk of work is in place. Once it's established, once it's described, once it starts, the person already that. So that's probably one. Also, I would say that it's a little bit easier in the western United States to get the specific goal and to become more goal oriented when it comes to tasks. Russians, I believe Russian businessmen still struggle a little bit when it comes to strategy and building specific goals, establishing these goals and working towards those goals and implementing those goals. So the typical scenario we need to basically plan one meeting after another. And so the meetings will not have a specific agenda, and so meetings will be just discussing events, discussing things, but there won't be specific goals that are being set. And so for me, somebody like myself, it's very interesting and challenging to actually arrive to Russia and try to bring some of this experience in the Russian businesses and try to bring it in a way that benefits Russian society. And a lot of times, it's a gratifying experience because people, you can see in the struggle. >> Mm-hm. >> You can see that you will have six, seven people in the room and you'll literally have to struggle through the meetings to make them say, yes I am responsible for this, I'm going to take full responsibility. Whereas in United States it may be, it will be a matter of ten seconds. Who's responsible for this? I am responsible. In our culture, it may take hours to walk through, to actually make a person responsible and to set goals and have that person commit to these goals. Not just commit to them, but commit in terms of a specific time payable on delivery. So, it's a gratifying experience in that it's possible people understand the necessity. They instinctively feel that that's the right way to go, but it's a cultural struggle for them to take their full responsibility, to take full responsibility for something. Especially, it becomes clear in types of situation I get involved, because it's a crisis situation. And in a crisis mode even some of our American, European counterparts will struggle with this, but especially here it becomes very visible and clear. >> And I think this is a very good point that you're bringing about crisis situations because you know, often people say well, what are you talking about? Russian American business is done according to certain rules. You have to do this and that, there are tasks, there are meetings, there are assignments. But when it's a crisis, when the situation becomes unpredictable, they say that cultural features actually, sometimes called national cultural features, they really show up when they're more or less spontaneous. When there isn't much burden or much pressure from what has already been organizational culture, what professional culture imposes, and here in the crisis, all these things say, it kind of go stop into person because some emotional load to struggle with and here is where really cultural features may be seen very clearly. So, thank you for also bringing this point for that. >> Sure, my pleasure, you mentioned emotions that's another interesting one that just came to my mind and pointed out our western colleagues have learned, I think, better than we do to separate emotions from business. And so a lot of times you're in these business meetings somebody would get emotional and it would be frowned upon a little bit. People would say why don't you calm down, we'll continue this conversation later. Where as in Russia emotions and business are still together. They're interwoven and so in a lot or organizations it makes it more difficult. Because emotions are accepted. It's a commonplace thing during heated business discussions. And so it makes it a little harder. So I feel like progress is being made when I talk to a lot of younger colleagues in Russia they seem to be adapting a little bit better to the western ways of doing business. But not only younger, so there's always some changes. But in general, it definitely makes it easier to solve crisis business issues when you can separate emotions from business and that takes practice. It's not a, it is a cultural difference and for me personally, since we're talking a little bit about my story, it took a long time, it took a long time to. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> And let's see what we hear next time. >> Thank you.

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